Some instructional designers insist that Learning Objectives drive the design process (Morrison, Ross, Kalman, & Kemp, 2013). Others contend that it is the natural outgrowth of the instructional and enabling analysis and should evolve somewhere in the design process (Hoffman, 2012). Still others see them as the metric by which the learner is primarily to be assessed (Clark & Mayer, 2016).

Although this aspect of course development seems to be an essential component of course design, almost 30-years of teaching and course development experience, I have yet to find any student or teacher who has reported that students actually use them for learning. In addition, their use and place in the design architecture seems to vary from designer to designer.

As a result, it seems that this quasi-essential aspect of design work needs to be revisited. If it is intended as a device for student consumption that is critical to the learning process, then why is it often portrayed as a bullet list prior to the actual learning process, only to be given tangential and opaque references throughout the learning modalities themselves? If it is a design convention, used exclusively to ensure design integrity and verticality, then why is it made available to the students at all when the design research emphasizes the value of eliminating extraneous information in the coursework?

Admittedly, I am biased toward the importance of learning objectives. However, I am more biased toward keeping only those items that improve student learning. If learning objectives are going to be a part of the student learning experience, they should be prominent, promote active learning experiences, and part of the formative assessment experience.

So, what does that look like? It depends.

That is the reason that companies need to hire instructional designers rather than go by a cookie-cutter prefabricated course template. How the learning objective is embedded in the course is contingent on a number of factors – not the least of which is the subject matter, instructors facilitating the course, and the learners using it.

That said, it is not an entirely subjective process. It seems that the Understanding by Design (UbD) method provides adequate flexibility to incorporate learning objectives into whatever section is most appropriate in that it is less linear and places the learning objectives first in the process and reframes them as “Big Ideas,” then embeds them throughout. In turn, it then prescribes the designer to interact with the SMEs regarding the assessments of those Big Ideas. It is not until the tail end in the process that the designer is to do the conventional work of framing student understanding and abilities in learning objective language. In essence, these objectives are actually being used in various perspectives throughout the process.

Although UbD is functional for a broad array of courses. There are shortcomings if used for those hard-coded practitioner-based courses, like; computer programming, aircraft maintenance, or construction manuals. In those type courses, identifying a list of big ideas, assessing, then wordsmithing learning objectives can lose critical components of sequential skills that have to be carefully thought through with the SME. In those cases, a strong argument can be made for doing the instructional and enabling analysis first (Hoffman, 2013). Then, let the learning objectives evolve from the prior tedious work of the initial analysis.

The prevalent problem in those courses is gaining adequate access to qualified SMEs that are willing to devote the time and attention to the tedious work of instructional and enabling analysis. Several methods can be used to mitigate lack of availability. One method is to use the SMEs preferred texts and/or manuscripts to cull much of the analyses from those documents prior to engaging with the SME. This provides not only a hierarchy of detailed instruction, but also provides a foil to ask informed questions, showing the SME that you are equally invested in the project. Special attention should be given to those assessments to ensure that clear instructions and enablement have been considered and aligned.

By doing this, you can have a draft outline of instructions and enabling analyses available for the SME to preview. In addition, you can provide them with a draft of questions to be asked before the session, should the SME prefer.